1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an organic electroluminescent device (hereinafter referred to as an “organic EL device”) including organic electroluminescent elements (hereinafter referred to as “organic EL elements”) provided on a support substrate and an electronic apparatus including the above organic El device.
2. Related Art
Organic EL devices each have a pixel region in which a plurality of pixels is arranged on a support substrate, and in each of the plurality of pixels, an organic EL element is formed which includes at least a first electrode layer, a light-emitting layer, and a second electrode layer provided in that order at an upper layer side of an insulating film. Among the organic EL devices as described above, in particular, in a top emission-type organic EL device in which light emitted from an organic EL element is emitted through a second electrode layer, since the second electrode layer is required to have light transparency, the thickness thereof is small, and as a result, luminescent variation caused by electrical resistance of the second electrode layer is liable to generate.
Accordingly, as shown in FIGS. 13A and 13B, a technique to prevent luminescent variation caused by electrical resistance of a second electrode layer 9a has been proposed in which auxiliary wires 8a are formed at an upper layer side or a lower layer side of the second electrode layer 9a in regions located between adjacent pixels 100a (for example, see JP-A-2003-123988).
A potential is applied to the auxiliary wires 8a and the second electrode layer 9a through terminals 104 and the like, and lower layer-side conductive pattern portions 6s for applying a potential to the auxiliary wires 8a and the second electrode layer 9a are electrically connected to the respective terminals 104 at a lower layer side of an insulating film 113. Hence, in general, the structure is used in which a contact portion 113r is formed of a non-forming region of the insulating film 113, and end portions of the auxiliary wires 8a are provided on an upper surface of the lower layer-side conductive pattern portion 6s so that the auxiliary wires 8a are connected thereto.
However, since the auxiliary wire 8a is formed in a region located between the adjacent pixels 100a to have a small width, in order to reduce connection resistance by increasing an overlapped area between the auxiliary wire 8a and the lower layer-side conductive pattern portion 6s, a length L of an overlapped portion between the auxiliary wire 8a and the lower layer-side conductive pattern portion 6s must be increased; hence, in the structure shown in FIGS. 13A and 13B, a width dimension W50 of the contact portion 113r must be increased. Accordingly, in a support substrate 110d, a peripheral region 100c, which is not directly responsible for display, is formed to have a large width dimension at an outer side of a pixel region 110a, and as a result, the size of the support substrate 110d is disadvantageously increased with respect to the area of the pixel region 110a. 
In addition, also in the case in which the auxiliary wires 8a are not formed, and the second electrode layer 9a is directly provided on the upper surface of the lower layer-side conductive pattern portion 6s so as to directly and electrically connect the second electrode layer 9a thereto, the width dimension W50 of the contact portion 113r must be disadvantageously increased as in the case described above.
In addition, in the case of a bottom emission-type organic EL device in which light emitted from an organic EL element is emitted from a support substrate side, the problem described above is also generated when the thickness of the second electrode layer 9a is small, and the electrical resistance thereof is large.